Description

Extraordinary social and moral shifts have taken place in Western societies. Sex is no longer the exclusive province of husband and wife set within monogamous married family life. The world is awash in sex: advertising, books, magazines, movies, sex clubs, internet pornography, etc. Parents, traditionally responsible for guiding their children's moral and social development, have been effectively side-lined by commercial and governmental interests.

This volume pursues a detailed study of how changes in social life dating from the sexual revolution of the 1960s have affected the family. Cherry shows that attempts to redefine the family away from the marital union of husband and wife come with real costs: social, emotional, psychological, and financial. He argues that while political campaigns have fuelled attempts to undermine the traditional family, to pretend it possesses no basic biological, social, or moral reality, such ideologically driven undertakings are injurious to society.

Acting as if there are no consequential differences between traditional marriage and other sexual lifestyles ignores significant data demonstrating the importance of the traditional biological family to the well-being of men and women, and the successful raising of children. The family possesses a biological and moral being that is foundational; an essential building block of society. Cherry argues that the family is the most incontrovertible field of conflict in the culture wars; others might conclude that it is the decisive battleground.

Table of Contents

Contents

Acknowledgments

1 Sex, Family, and the Culture Wars: An Introduction1.1 Sex and the Family1.2 Traditional versus Post-traditional Family Life: Contested Grounds in the Culture Wars1.3 The Family and Its Role in Human Flourishing1.4 Shifting Sexual Mores and Uncomfortable Social Consequences1.5 A God's Eye Perspective on the Family1.6 Four Heuristic Accounts of the Family1.7 A Final Warning

2 The Family as a Sociobiological Reality2.1 Sociobiology and the Human Family2.2 Altruism, Kinship, and the Family: The Importance of Inclusive Fitness2.3 Sexual Divergence—Human Reproductive Strategies and Sex Differences2.4 Conclusion: Heterosexual Normativity, Patriarchal Families, Paternalism, and Other Political Controversies

3 The Family as a De Facto Category of Social Reality3.1 The Family as a Central Category of Experience, Being, and Knowledge3.2 The Family as a Sui Generis Category of Social Reality: The Being of the Family for Thought and Thought's Apprehension of the Family's Being3.3 Individual Interactions that Become Familial Interactions3.4 Conceptualizing the Social Implications of the Sociobiological Data3.5 Conclusion: The Rejection of a Nominalist Account of the Family

4 God and the Philosopher; Or Why a God's Eye Perspective Is Necessary to Secure a Particular Account of the Family4.1 The Necessity of a God's Eye Perspective4.2 God's Perspective on Reality as a Regulative Ideal4.3 The Atheistic Methodological Postulate versus the Theistic Methodological Postulate: Competing Views of the Reality of the Family4.4 Conclusion: Without God Moral Pluralism Cannot Be Resolved

5 The Family as a Liberal Social-Constructivist Social Entity5.1 A Moral and Political Ideological Agenda5.2 Idealized Liberty and Equality5.3 Homosexual Marriage and Other Nontraditional Families5.4 The Liberation of Children5.5 The "Mature Minor": Conceptual Puzzles5.6 Conclusion: A Destructive Ethos

6 Deregulating Family Life: The Family as a Libertarian Constructivist Social Entity6.1 Experiments in Living6.2 Liberty as a Side Constraint—The Family as a Face-to-Face Voluntary Association6.3 Families May Have Unequal Power Relationships, Embody Nonliberal Accounts of the Good, Discriminate, and Violate Redistributive Justice6.4 Conclusion: The Limits of Legitimate Governmental Authority

7 The Family and the Fundamentalist Secular State: The Establishment at Law of a Fully Secular Ideology7.1 Return to the Culture Wars7.2 Faith in God versus Faith in Reason— The Creation of Secularism7.3 The Attempt to Construct an International Secular Morality: The "Human Rights" Agenda7.4 Deep Moral and Epistemological Ambiguity: Human Rights as a Modus Vivendi7.5 Conclusion: A Secular World in Crisis

8 Sex, Abortion, and Ideological Entrenchment: At the Brink of Nihilism8.1 Devout Secularism8.2 Shifts in Taken-for-Granted Sexual Mores8.3 Why Abortion Is Central8.4 Living Honestly with Significant Moral Pluralism8.5 At the Brink of Nihilism: Recapturing the Family